Energy – blog@davemckay.ca

NIMBY

I can understand why the City of Thorold did not proactively remove the large rotten senile neighbourhood trees. The budget for one large tree removal could be $10,000, and public works, I am certain, does not want the noise of residents fighting back with “not my tree!”

So, the downblast happened and many massive old trees surrendered. We were without power for the better part of 37 hours. Gods know what the cost of all that emergency remediation was. Certainly it will be a lot more than it would have cost to responsibly replace the old trees, that needed to come down, and did come down, with new native trees in a timely manner.

And what this illustrates for me, that has much larger implications is that we can have a problem and know what needs to be done to fix it, but be unable to fix it because we are collectively too stupid.

This is what is wrong also with our climate emergency and our fantasy energy policies. We have had the technology to mitigate against greenhouse gas emissions and climate heating since the 1970s. But stupid arguments about cost and safety and the cries of the wild NIMBY have made it impossible to follow evidence-based policy to deal with the situation.

As an example, I sincerely doubt that the Doctor of Quantum Chemistry Angela Merkel was unaware of the realities of nuclear electricity generation. But for decades it was expedient for her Party to encourage and exploit the anti-nuclear movement in Germany to maintain power. Energiewende has cost significantly more than it would have cost to decarbonize Germany’s electricity sector with new nuclear, and mostly all it has accomplished is replacing clean safe already-payed-for nuclear with short-lived unreliable wind&solar. But the NIMBY public would not have voted for her Party if they had taken an evidence-based position instead.

And I think this is a question of leadership. Leaders need to take valid policy decisions and educate the public as to why those are right. They cannot effectively govern if what they are doing instead is chasing the disinformed ignorance of an electorate.

We need to do better than this.

Two solutions, one obstructionism

We don’t really recycle. There is no market, and there are no facilities for recycling almost everything we pretend to recycle.

I said to someone, “We should stop pretending to recycle; stop shipping our pretend-recycling waste overseas to be disposed of… badly.”

They looked appalled and, with some disgust, said, “So! You think it should just go in landfill‽ If we are not recycling enough then the solution is that we should [pretend to] recycle more.” as if those are the only two options.

Of course the “solution” is to reduce material waste in the supply chain and to build local facilities for handling the remaining waste locally. Mostly that would be waste-to-energy plants.

Wind&solar are not viable technologies for providing the energy that a technological civilization uses. We should stop pretending that they are and invest in real clean energy solutions like nuclear technology we have had fully resolved for decades.

This idea will appall people who really have invested a lot of their psyche in their identity as a forward-thinking green energy activist. “No no!” they will scream. “The solution is to double down and [try futilely] to build even more wind&solar.” “Besides, batteries!” Or, somehow worse, they will gleefully state that since they could afford enough of their own rooftop solar to satisfy them, that everyone else should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do likewise. Even though that is a logistical and economic impossibility.

Of course the “solution” is to turn back the pages to before the anti-nuclear movement created an environment of such pervasive disinformation about nuclear power that we stopped building out the only infrastructure that can replace fossil fuel and that could have mitigated this ongoing climate catastrophe.

STEM-challenged people who “mean well” are gonna get civilization and most of the life on this planet… ended.

But what about Chernobyl?

A Peter thought he had a gottcha by crying out, “What about TMI, Fukishima, Chernobyl.” He did not. It is like the Peters think these PRATTs have not been addressed numerous times.

Fukushima killed no one. It was an expensive industrial accident. But Japan has moved on from that setback. On the other hand, the tsunami resulted in “19,759 deaths, 6,242 injured, and 2,553 people missing.” The principal contamination from the tsunami was hundreds of thousands of tonnes of urban waste, fuel, and debris that entered the ocean. The water released from Fukishima had radiation levels lower than the limit for drinking water. Which, because of radon, if you have ever been on a well, you were exposed to similar.

As for, “What about Chernobyl‽”

First, while initially it was thought that the accident would render the exclusion zone uninhabitable, what actually happened is that in the absence of human settlement the area has recovered a diverse ecosystem, with even large rare mammals finding sanctuary in the accidental nature preserve. The presence of human settlement was actually worse for the environment, than the disaster. Which is a real slap in the face.

In fact the undamaged reactors remained in operation for many years and, before the Russian invasion, the exclusion zone was a tourist attraction. But I advise you not to go near the elephant’s foot. Which you can’t anyway.

Secondly, while horrific, the increased mortality from the disaster is something between 4000 and 15,000 over a period of about 70 years. That number will be rapidly decreasing because the Russian invasion of Ukraine is causing so many more deaths. If a Russian drone kills you today, you cannot get thyroid cancer in 20 years.

To put the 4–15 thousand in context, since long before 1986 air pollution from just German industry, primarily coal-fired electricity generation, has been killing ~75,000 Europeans every year. Five times the high-bound for increased mortality over a century from the accident.

While offshoring dirty industry to China has moved some of those deaths to Asia, the closure of the last two nuclear plants in 2022 was expected to INCREASE the annual deaths by ~1000 in Europe. That was four years ago. So, just those two Energiewende nuclear closures may have killed more people than Chernobyl ever will, already.

But there remain people who whatabout “Three Mile Island or Chernobyl or Fukushima,” to promote their own anti nuclear agenda and undermine the world’s energy supply. For instance, at its peak, before energiewende, Germany was getting 167.27 TWh from clean, safe, already paid for, nuclear that was running like a Swiss watch. In 2025 after a quarter century and what must be approaching €600 BILLION, wind only contributed 133 TWh and solar only contributed 89.62 TWh. For that kind of money Germany could have tripled their nuclear and been producing a 4.37 TWh SURPLUS of low carbon electricity in 2025. Instead they are still burning 204.73 TWh worth of fossil fuel. With the consequent air pollution and annual death toll far in excess of Chernobyl and the rest.

On the other hand, from 13 years ago, “NASA scientist Dr. Pushker Kharecha and Dr. James Hansen (the leading climate scientist in the US) recently authored a study which conservatively estimates nuclear power has saved 1.8 million lives, which otherwise would have been lost due to fossil fuel pollution and associated causes, since 1971.” That number is almost certainly well in excess of 2 million by now.

Pretending that nuclear is dangerous is the actual thing that is delaying our energy transition away from fossil fuels.

PhD

There will be people who dismiss the overwhelming data and research and peer-reviewed science showing that wind&solar are NOT solving our energy crisis, and won’t, but that nuclear can. And despite rejecting every bit of published evidence, some of those people will claim that their opinion must be respected, on account of having got a PhD. Maybe even in physics. But jumping through the hoops to get a graduate degree is not a guarantee of anything really, other than being a good student.

So I share this anecdote about a PhD in Geography, as an illustration of how, while you might expect such a person to really know their subject, or to be either educated or intelligent, sometimes you may be disappointed.

I have done a lot of map drawing in my career. Hundreds of maps. There is another illustrator in Toronto who has done most of the rest. We both know what we are doing.

Years ago, one of our educational publishing customers hired a “Senior Content Production Manager,” who had a PhD in Geography, because they wanted better geography products. This Doctor of Geography got in a whole thing with the other illustrator about maps they had drawn, putting the freelancer to something like 23 passes of changes, which is ridiculous. So the good Doctor, the presumed expert in Geography, which includes one might think maps, decided the solution was to only hire “approved” “cartographers” from then on.

There was a process for suppliers to run a map-drawing obstacle course to get approved. I was part of that process. I was not approved. But I found out pretty quickly why the PhD had so much trouble with the other illustrator. Dr Geo knew sfa about maps or illustration or the production process. Depending on what their thesis was, maybe little about grade-school Geography.

There were numerous facepalms. But I will leave this here so you can wonder, “Who the hell is giving these people PhD’s?”

When the project began I had some practical questions about the specifications for the artwork. Dr Geo, did not seem to have useful answers to these questions, except for one in particular. I asked, because publishers each have their own preferences, “What map projection would you like this test map to be?” Dr Geo’s angry answer? “I don’t want any kind of ‘map projection!’ I just want an ordinary map.”

They did not know what a map projection was, that all accurate maps are defined by a projection. Education is our best defence against stupid ignorance. But it is not fool-proof.

This is the map that failed the test.
itsamap

Cost of New Nuclear

Anti-nuclear activists often talk about nuclear being expensive. It is not. However if you are deliberately obstructing infrastructure investment, you can artificially balloon costs. Then pretend it is not your own fault.

Regulatory fees in the US, for example, dominate the upfront cost of building new nuclear, because the bureaucracy is deliberately obstructionist. But mismanaging financing creates the largest cost overruns.

Let’s say you take out a business loan for $20 billion. And the expectation is that you will complete your nuclear project and start grinding down the principal in 7 years. But then idiots delay the start of your project for five years. Then part way through they put a stop to the project for an additional three years for a bogus environmental assessment. And delays beget delays so that by the time you actually complete the project, your “costs” of servicing that loan have gone on for an extra decade. Compounded 5% interest on $20 billion over ten years is almost $13 billion. Just the inflated principal from interest during delays.

And that example does not even take into account inflation. Which typically could be 2% per year. Over ten years that compounds to a 22% increase in costs. It is the delays that mostly cause cost overruns.

Between the delays and inflation cited in the above examples, that $20 billion “ballooned” to over $40 billion. Nuclear provides one of the highest ROI of any energy technology. But if you let the anti-nuclear lobby pile on red tape and “fish discos” and impose delays, it can be no surprise that their are large cost overruns, because those are deliberate.

And even so, because wind and solar have such short lifespans, and appalling capacity factor and demand an almost equal investment in storage, which we do not actually have a technology for, even with the deliberate mismanagement, nuclear is still far far cheaper.

Science program hypocrisy

I paused a science podcast, cause they pissed me off. Their claim, regarding the promise of nuclear power was that, “the story on nuclear power is more equivocal.”

We need to emphasize that the reality is that nuclear power has the best safety record of any real and meaningful source of electricity and that safe used-nuclear-fuel storage has been a solved problem for five fucking decades!

These popular lies about nuclear power, Points Refuted A Thousand Times, have been a major contributing factor, and the reason why we have done absolutely nothing, less than nothing, far less, to reduce our CO2 emissions.

Anti-nuclear energy activism is effectively the same as fossil fuel lobbying, in that they both equally prevent our actually depreciating fossil fuels and replacing them with abundant low-carbon energy.

And a science program dancing around and promoting disinformation about nuclear energy is the same garbage, in kind, to the science denial regarding the evidence for anthropogenic climate change that the program then went on to deride.

“You’re Being Lied To About Nuclear Waste”

A few considerations…
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“Temporary” dry-cask storage does NOT pose any kind of risk. Not any more than a jug of bleach. Unless you are stupid enough to drink the bleach. And it would be so many orders of magnitude more difficult, and time consuming, and labour intensive, and costly, to “get at” any of the fuel in DCS than to just chug some bleach in front of the washing machine.

A simple solution to automatically cooling wet storage is called a Stirling Engine. As things stand, most backups are diesel, but if you just wanna be able to “walk-away” there are solutions.

The solution to sites where nuclear plants have been decommissioned or removed and the DCS has been left behind, is to rebuild the nuclear plants. Those sites are ideal for new nuclear. All the original connectivity is already in place.

The discussion of military waste is not relevant to civilian energy. Here’s an idea. Don’t build nuclear weapons.

It is insane to put 90% recyclable fuel in DGS. FFS! Recycle it!

OMG! She said, ass backwards, that reprocessing fuel could power the entire US for 100 years at a cost of $100 billion. I don’t know about you, but that seems like $1 billion a year to power the whole country for a century. Um, seems like a really really low-cost. The US could just take that out of the criminal-ICE budget. GFGDCoaS!

If we just took $100 billion from Eloi Mush right now, he would still be a many-multi billionaire and everyone’s energy could be FREE for ten decades? Sounds awesome!

“Burning coal produces toxic coal ash.” Yes. And orders of magnitude more of the radioactive waste in our environment than nuclear technology. Because radioactive Carbon 14 is just dumped into the environment out chimneys of coal plants. Coal burning presents an actual radioactive waste problem.

Worrying about how a collapsed civilization would deal with our waste is a bit like worrying about whether you might have left the iron on after your house has been blown away by a hurricane.